Thursday, November 29, 2007

Scott Adams on why he is cutting back on blogging

I thought was interesting. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, does a very good blog -- but he is going to cut back on it because he say is is costing him money. Here's a quote from his post:

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger. Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably “I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post.” Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it. And a startling number of readers couldn’t tell when I was serious or kidding, so most of the negative reactions were based on misperceptions.

7 comments:

Question MR. He stated that his income was reduced. How does that happen? If his cartoons are being featured in the comic sections of papers, and someone doesn't read his strip in that paper because of his blog, how would that affect his income? Is there some cartoonist pay scale or something? Or was he referring to book sales of the Dilbert strips?

And, on a related note, if people get ticked at one of your blogs would your income be lowered? :)

As more and more companies are hiring evil human resources directors and doing away with people who actually know what everyone does and can step up and actually do those jobs, Dilbert should appeal to more and more people. I never understood Dilbert when the "Firm" had a personnel director, but shortly after the first evil human resources director was hired, it began to make more and more sense.

I guess it might hurt his book sales -- which I am sure earn him a pretty penny. And if millions of readers got mad at his blog and screamed at the local paper to drop his strip, that would hurt him. But I don't see that happening.

The return on investment on a blog is pretty low. So I guess he thinks he could be doing other things with his time that are more financially productive. It's too bad -- he does a very job with it and obviously gets lots of traffic.

Marshall Ramsey, 39, is the editorial cartoonist for The Clarion-Ledger. He is a two-time Pulitzer finalist and is nationally syndicated by Copley News Service. His cartoons have appeared in USA Today, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and on his Mother's refrigerator. It is also rumored that his work has appeared frequently in the bathrooms of several prominent local politicians.